Rugby Union: Greatness awaits

Ahead of the England squad lie seven weeks in which they can conquer the world and write their names in rugby history

Jonny’s in town this week. He is in the England team’s Perth hotel. He’s also on the streets, on posters, in colour supplements and newspaper profiles, and hanging on lampposts. Perth is no rugby hotbed — they prefer Aussie rules out here in the wide west — and Friday’s opening ceremony for the fifth World Cup is four hours east by air, in Sydney.

But the attention paid to the phenomenal Newcastle Falcon fly-half Jonny Wilkinson, and the sense of thrill here about the impending competition, shows how far rugby has come in this country since the inaugural tournament in 1987, when only 18,000 Australians watched a semi-final involving their own Wallabies.

And it shows that England are rising in everybody’s perceptions, and terrifying the rugby people of a whole hemisphere with the prospect that the World Cup could be coming home, to the old country. My view is that England will,